


game without talons

by corbaccio



Series: flightless [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, Porn With Plot, Post-Time Skip, Sad Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:42:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29496744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corbaccio/pseuds/corbaccio
Summary: Eren returns to Armin's room despite himself. And there, he finds Armin not just awake but waiting.(Contains spoilers up to chapter 123 of the manga.)
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager
Series: flightless [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2166642
Comments: 20
Kudos: 136





	game without talons

**Author's Note:**

> this can be read as a stand-alone fic, though the first one-shot does provide some context. to keep it brief, it's the night before the corps leave for marley, and eren can't help coming back to armin's room a second time.

Eren knocked before he could think better of it. He was already at Armin’s door; the decision had been made. This moment might not have made an appearance in Eren’s memories, but as soon as Armin had made the invitation, he’d known that coming back was inevitable. It was simpler to let his feet lead him here than to pretend he could resist the urge. 

If Armin did not answer, then Eren would not try again. He would return to his room and lie still long enough that the blankness of sleep would steal Armin’s face out of his mind. Of course, the compromise was so easy to come to only because Eren was certain that he _would_ answer. It was not a matter of hope; Eren just knew, as sure as he always was when it came to Armin.

The click came too quickly considering the time of night. The door rattled, stuck, before it pulled away. Eren’s hand had barely dropped back to his side before it swung open and revealed Armin there. 

“Eren,” he said, his voice caught somewhere between relief and unease, frustration and fondness. “What are you doing up still?”

It had been a few hours since Eren had left him. Which meant that Armin should have been sleeping by now, and which meant that he must not have been able to. 

“Can I come in?” he asked. 

The tension left Armin’s face in the breadth of his sigh. “Of course. You never have to ask,” he said, and he stepped back to make the space between himself and the threshold larger, when it had already been large enough to pass through. 

The room was unchanged from earlier. Even the bed was made still, though the blanket was rumpled where it had been pin-neat before. Armin might have changed into his nightclothes (those as familiar as the rest of him, soft and tired flannel), but that he had not slipped beneath the covers was telling. Maybe, Eren allowed himself to think, he’d been waiting up for him. Maybe—as Eren had known with such conviction that Armin would answer the door in the time it took him to blink—Armin had known that Eren would come. Drawn to him like it was both natural and necessary, the same way all water ran to the sea. 

“Have you managed to finish packing, at least?” Armin shut the door behind him as gently as he could manage, and still he cringed at its unhappy whine. At the crown of his head, his hair stood staticky and unsettled. Another restless symptom. 

“Yeah.” Eren let his gaze move around the room. It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it sat heavy on his tongue. “There’s just a few more things I need to do before tomorrow.”

The even line of his mouth was likely meant to be neutral, but on Armin—around Eren, knowing him too well—it betrayed his disquiet. It had been a long time since he had last tried to get Eren to elaborate, and that itself had been a painful development. Nothing new, not by now, but the look on Armin’s face sapped the warmth from his blood all the same. It did make certain things easier, though.

“Did you want to talk?” Armin asked, always with the olive branch. 

Certain things, much easier.

“No. Not to talk,” Eren said, and thus—there was nothing more to say. Eren’s words explained themselves, and Armin understood: his face warmed with colour, and he did not back away as Eren closed the short space between them.

It was thoughtless, effortless. Eren bent his head just a little, feeling the intake of Armin’s breath draw cold air between them. Before he had the chance to release it, Eren kissed him. Deeply, hungrily. The momentum of it had Armin anchoring one hand in his hair and another around his waist, fist twisting in his jacket as if Eren might run from him. 

The shivering heat in Eren’s stomach grew fiercer, a fire lapping at the sky. _Selfish, needy_ , Eren thought at himself, and he let the fire eat away that bitterness, too, until there was nothing in his mind but Armin, the perfect weight of him, the noises he was making into Eren’s mouth and the greedy sweep of his tongue against his palate. 

This, at least, was familiar. The nights they could patch together when they had the spare time and the same station were rarer than ever these days, but they were always enough. Sometimes, they didn’t speak at all. Armin would just kiss him and hold him, with a dying man’s desperate hands. And sometimes he simply lay here, and as he parted his thighs to let Eren settle between them Armin would arch and sigh—slow, almost sad, but with undeniable heat—and open to him, body and soul. He always did. 

As Armin broke from him, breathing like he might never breathe again, he hooked Eren’s gaze with his own. Even in moments like this, what did Armin see? Perhaps it was there still, that bleak hunger for something Eren did not understand or even recognise. Eren hardly knew this version of himself; it felt unfair to expect Armin to. Some cold stranger had shrugged on his skin, or he had shrugged on theirs, and there would be no shedding it now.

“You’re here,” Armin whispered, somehow a plea and a comfort at once. His hands cradled Eren’s face, so alike that tender touch earlier. “I knew you’d come.”

 _Don’t_ , Eren almost said, but he couldn’t—he didn’t know what he was refusing or whether he just couldn’t stand to hear Armin speak that way. He was right, after all. Some things were immutable: Eren’s presence here, his wilful surrender. Armin’s body, and what Eren knew about it, years of mapping and memorising as friends and lovers both. How it fit the curve of his palms, and how best to make him shudder, and what touches stirred what sounds. The taste of his skin, too, just as Eren had imagined. Pure saline, more sea than the sea itself. 

Undressing Armin was easy, an efficiency likewise borne of habit. So often they had had only a scant ten or twenty minutes to make the most of, and so they had learnt fast how to _be_ fast. Eren did not have the greatest luxury of time now, either; dawn was at the heels of this fading night, and then there would never be another chance. Not while Armin still looked at him with light in his eyes. Less bright than it used to be, maybe, but there nonetheless—a while yet before it would dim to nothing. 

They had more than twenty minutes, at least. Eren promised his aching soul to treasure every second. 

Armin pulled at Eren’s clothes even as he stepped out of his own. Eren was still in uniform; the jacket came off easily enough, but Armin yanked at his shirt with less patient grace. 

“Eren,” he said, plaintive, as if even now he could hardly believe Eren was there. “Take it off.”

Eren allowed himself to be amused. He barely had it over his head before Armin was pulling at him again, guiding him to the bed. The backs of his knees met the mattress, and Eren sat hard. Armin didn’t join him on it; instead he slid his palms down Eren’s clothed thighs before pushing them apart, settling into a kneel between them. His naked body was striking against the dark floor, practically luminescent—his skin an unbroken expanse, from the nape of his neck to the small of his back to the soles of his bare feet. No permanent bruises from the harness any longer.

Armin leaned his cheek against the inside of Eren’s knee, his smooth, sweet face turned upwards. He did not even have to look at his hands as they untied Eren’s laces. With deliberate slowness he pulled off one boot, and then the other, setting them next to his own on the floor. Armin took the same care with his belt. The sensation of his fingers loosening the buckle, and the even slide as he tugged it through the belt loops, made Eren’s cock thicken with anticipation. After so many years the reaction was a conditioned one, a knowledge that required no words. Armin worked free the buttons of his fly, shaking hands steady now, and as he reached for his waistband Eren lifted his hips automatically to let him peel off his trousers and underwear both. 

There was unmistakable hunger in Armin’s gaze. When Eren glanced down between his legs, he could see precome leaked all over Armin’s inner thigh where his erection lay against it. Already so hard for him, and so desperate, and all without being touched there. Eren groaned at the sight. 

Not that he was any better. Eren felt so sensitive it was like he’d come already; it was almost too much when Armin finally began to stroke him with loose, teasing pulls, his palm barely skimming Eren’s shaft. He watched Eren’s face as he did so, his throat flushed, lips parted just enough that Eren could see light catch the very edge of his teeth. 

“I want you up here,” Eren struggled to say. Nice as the vantage point was—Armin kneeling naked beneath him had made up as many dreaming scenes as real ones—Eren needed him close, needed him level. 

Armin stood easily despite the sore and ruddy look of his knees. He moved from Eren only to grab something from the drawer of his desk. 

A little flask of oil. “You kept it in your desk?”

Armin blushed. He cleared his throat. “Well, where else? I didn’t want to keep it under the pillow. Last time, it leaked all— _oof_.”

Pulling Armin on to the bed with him was a simple matter. The bed creaked at his weight, and creaked louder as they twisted against each other. Their kissing was hardly kissing anymore; Eren caught hold of Armin’s wrists—finely boned but firm, unyielding—and they took desperate gasping breaths of each other, until at last he needed real air. Eren released him, settling next to Armin flat on the mattress.

“Ever tempted while writing all those reports?” Eren said, glancing pointedly at the bottle still in Armin’s hand. It wasn’t so much a tease as it was genuine curiosity. Right now, with Armin panting and reaching for him, it was easy to tap back into that familiar rapport. The rest of the world, and the war, and the callous pointless politics—it had all dissolved into the scorching heat of Armin’s mouth. 

Armin’s blush deepened. “It’s not exactly arousing work,” he said. He sounded a little breathless, though, throat jumping at his swallow. 

And that certainly wasn’t a _no_.

“Do you think of me?” Eren dragged his hand through the mess of precome on Armin’s thighs and stomach, that left the thatch of flaxen hair there sticky. Armin just about choked as Eren’s slick fingers closed around him. “I think of you,” Eren said, low, throaty. “I only ever think about you. Touching yourself like this.” He pulled hard enough at Armin’s cock that the breath punched out of him. “You’re louder when you do it yourself. I’ve heard you sometimes when you think I’m asleep.”

Armin said nothing, but his eyes were fixed on Eren’s face, the muddled heat making even his gaze hazy. He thrust up into Eren’s hand as it slid almost away.

“Be as loud as you like,” Eren said. “You can’t be shy around me.”

It wasn’t an order; Eren spoke it as simple truth. He had seen Armin stripped of everything, in every sense. There was neither the space nor the need for shame. Armin touched him with that same shamelessness, like it was impossible not to, scraping his nails down Eren’s arms and around the back of his neck, up into his hair. He stayed quiet, though. Pitchy little noises escaped through his teeth as Eren stroked him, faster and easier now with how wet he was. Only at Armin’s hand snatching his wrist did Eren pause.

“If you don’t stop, I’ll come,” Armin whispered. It was rare he spoke so urgently, so bluntly. That very bluntness, and how tightly he held Eren’s wrist, and the way Armin’s stomach tensed as he forced his hips to still—Eren’s cock throbbed like he was moments from coming himself.

“Already?” Eren asked, awed rather than incredulous. 

Armin’s reply was unabashed. “Yes.” And then, with unexpected tenderness, “It’s been so long.”

The rush of feeling was too strong; Eren’s words got lost somewhere along the way, his affection a chokehold. He wanted to say anything—needed to, for himself as much as for Armin—but the intensity of his emotions only made him silent, stupid, unable even to breathe. 

Armin made a soft hushing sound, as if he’d sensed his thoughts or already knew them. He turned on to his side to make his body a matching bracket. Armin’s knee pushed at Eren’s own, a wordless request, and at the willing spread of his thighs Armin slid higher, nudging up at the underside of his erection. Even such minor contact had Eren’s scalp tingling, his toes curling. He could come from this alone and he wouldn’t have cared. Like teenagers in a shared bunk all over again, rubbing and writhing against each other, half-clothed, hands shoved wherever they could reach. The breathless laughing thrill of it. It had only been a few years, and yet it felt like a lifetime ago—someone else’s life. 

Armin must have had other ideas. With their legs still tangled together, he levered up on one elbow, ignoring Eren’s questioning look. It was a little awkward, but soon enough he had the bottle’s top screwed loose. He tipped too much oil into his other hand.

“I’ll do it myself, so just… just wait,” Armin murmured, and with another hot jolt of arousal Eren realised what he meant—Armin reaching behind the rise of his hip, stretching himself open. His eyes were closed, and his breath came in quick shallow pants that tickled Eren’s cheek. From this angle, Armin’s face was all that he could see, but he could feel the rhythm of it, hear it. The wet sounds of Armin fingering himself were almost obscene. 

It could only have been seconds before Armin was freeing his thigh from the trap of Eren’s own. Hardly any time to adjust, and Eren felt that teenage thrill again—how much Armin must have wanted this, wanted _him_ —and he lay flat on his back, Armin’s weight a welcome one as he straddled his hips. 

Eren could see so much of him like this. The shadows did not obscure the loving look of Armin’s face. His nipples stood hard, a muted red, flushed darker than the rest of him. Oil tracked shiny streaks down his wrist and across his chest from his clumsy pouring, visible even over the gloss of sweat. Eren wondered whether it was possible to come merely from looking at someone. Though Armin’s fingers around the base of his cock stole the thought away, and when he sunk down on to Eren’s lap, his mind blanked completely.

Hell, Eren had never stood a chance. Armin unmade him with such ease, with the simple smooth way he took Eren’s cock so deeply, bodies flush—just mind-numbing, gut-wrenching heat squeezing him near tight enough to hurt. Moving was impossible. Eren held Armin’s waist to keep him still, biting his cheek to bleed. 

His grip must have been bruising. Eren could feel the give of flesh beneath his fingernails, the guilty satisfaction of it, his knuckles milked of their colour. But Armin could take it, and he huffed a giddy noise, almost a laugh, as he rolled his hips as much as Eren’s hold would allow. Even that was too much. Eren felt blinded by it, his eyes squinting shut. The pleasure seared his nerves, the muscles in his thighs burning as he resisted the urge to thrust deeper into that welcome heat, to close the non-existent distance. 

Armin seemed satisfied with the stillness. His hands drifted across Eren’s abdomen, up to his chest, as if to gauge the tension rising in him. And then, barely, he began to move again—rocking little motions, each time making the softest of sounds, letting Eren’s fullness swell inside of him.

“God,” Armin said, a hoarse whisper. Sweat beaded at his temple. “I swear I can feel your pulse.”

Eren groaned helplessly. Certainly, he could feel it himself; Eren felt like nothing more than pounding blood, a hot rhythm that throbbed in his belly and his cock and had his hips lifting whenever Armin shifted away. His need was too great, and Armin’s words—the way he spoke them—only made it sharper. He thrust upward and pulled Armin hard against him, hard enough that he cried out, the pain and the pleasure transparent in it. 

“Sorry,” Eren gasped, but he didn’t stop. He was finding his pace now and Armin was matching it, riding him, flesh slapping flesh, head bent forward so his hair fell over his eyes. 

He let Eren bear most of his weight, one hand braced to the centre of his chest as the other pushed between them. Fuck, Armin was touching himself, the muscles in his forearm jumping, the head of his cock smearing slick across Eren’s abdomen. Eren felt each spasm of pleasure: Armin clenched tight around him with every upthrust, the force of it fucking him into his own hand. 

Eren heard his breathing more than he felt it. Heard the blood roaring in his ears like rushing water. The pressure was building, the tension knotting in his balls and beneath his navel until it was unbearable, unthinkable to stop and to keep going, his mind unravelling itself into nothing more than this, heat and feeling and Armin above him, surely just as mindless.

His body moved on its own. Eren drove deep one final time and kept Armin there as he came, his cock pulsing, chest heaving, hardly able to believe the strength of it. When he was again able to breathe, it left him in a ragged moan. He went boneless against the mattress, and for a few seconds they remained that way. Armin had yet to finish but he gasped like he had, all trembling legs as he lifted himself off Eren’s lap. Even that seemed difficult; Armin collapsed half on top of Eren before rolling on to his side. 

Eren could feel his cock, still so slick and hot and heavy, pushing against him, against the sheets. God, he didn’t even care that he’d made a mess of them. Armin would rut himself to sore pleasure if Eren let him, and sometimes he did, but not tonight—not with tomorrow. Eren slid down the narrow bed, hands skimming Armin’s body—to keep in his place, to show he was there—until he could take his cock into his mouth. The grip he had on Armin’s hips made no difference: the sudden scalding suction made him jerk up against Eren’s throat, and following his whimper there was a shuddering breathless sound.

Eren pinned him flat, his nose nudging the base of Armin’s stomach, and he sucked, hard, for as long as he or Armin could bear. Which wasn’t long at all. Every inch of him that Eren could see and feel stilled, and then shook, and at last the tension was ripped from him with an incoherent cry. He thrust hopelessly into Eren’s mouth, half-sobbing, clutching at Eren’s shoulders to steady himself against the force of his climax. Endless seconds as his muscles spasmed and then went slack.

The taste was salt-bitter but Eren didn’t pull away. He swallowed around the head of Armin’s cock, feeling it twitch in against his throat until Armin whined through gritted teeth, a long, low _ungh_ like it had been dragged out of his lungs. And still his thighs flexed against Eren’s front, seeking more even as his body flinched from it.

Eren wanted to make him come again. The thought made his cock ache despite the lasting tremors of his own release. How many could he draw out of Armin, each more wild and helpless than the last? There was such satisfaction in it—not in taking Armin apart, but in how he came apart, the way he would let himself go—pretending to nothing, breathless and sticky and purely physically present. Eren felt that same nakedness in himself, his mind and muscles wrenched loose. Everything else fell away but this perfect, private, impossible moment. The memory was Eren’s own, and always would be; this fresh one, and so many more in a shared past. Nobody else had seen Armin like this, had heard him, and only Armin had seen Eren that same way.

He hauled himself back up to the head of the bed. Eren felt so drained it seemed miraculous that he managed even that. As he sunk against the pillow, Armin turned in towards him. His hot cheek pressed against Eren’s chest.

“Are you really going to go?”

Eren’s heart and stomach lurched as if they were tethered together. “What?”

Armin must not have heard his panic, for he continued in that weary silken way. “Back to your own room. You said that there were some things you needed to do before tomorrow.”

Eren had said that, hadn’t he? The reminder was like a shock of ice.

“… Yeah. Yeah, I will.” The sick horror of it dulled a little, though less with relief and more with resignation. And despite it, Eren heard himself say, “But I can stay a little longer.”

Armin lifted his face from Eren’s clammy shoulder. From this angle, and with the sweet mess of his hair, it was difficult to decipher his expression. There was something missing from his smile, and Eren couldn’t see his eyes well enough to know what it was. It might not have made a difference even if he could.

“Okay. That’s—okay. Thank you,” Armin said, and again he lowered his head. “I’ll still be here in the morning, anyway.”

His hand moved automatically into Armin’s hair, rubbing the velvet bristle at the nape of his neck like it was something he could find a pattern in. Up around his ears, it was longer, softer. It passed through Eren’s fingers easier than it used to, cut so close as it was now. The feel of it—of absence, as jarring as a missed step—stirred a selfish old sadness.

Eren stared blankly upwards. “Is that a promise?” It was meant to be a joke, a wry remark on his own strange goodbye before. But Eren’s eyes stung as he spoke the words, and above him the ceiling blurred into the dark.

“Of course,” Armin said, so easily that the answer must have needed no thought at all. “Where could I even go without you?”

The weight of his exhaustion made him too honest, too gentle. There was the whispering of sheets against skin as Armin moved. He slid a cold foot between Eren’s calves, and his fingers bumped along his ribs as if to count them—one, two, three, four—but never long before they drifted back up to start again the endless cycle. Sternum, clavicle, rib cage, mapping the bones that made home around Eren’s heart.

“You could go anywhere,” said Eren. “You don’t need me.”

There was a lingering pause. His answer made little sense, but Eren could no more keep the words to himself than he could refuse this indulgence in the first place. He sensed the hitch in Armin’s inhale, and then the careful steadying of it. In so many things, in so many ways, Armin moderated himself. Eren should not have been surprised, but it burned—to know that this might be a deliberate guardedness, and to have it used against him.

“I don’t know about that,” said Armin, softly, slowly. Eren froze. He hadn’t expected him to reply at all. “But I would always want you there, Eren. Always. If you’re not there…” 

“I know,” Eren cut in. He could not stand to hear any more than that, not with the tremble in Armin’s voice. Eren swept the hair from his forehead and pressed his mouth to it. “I’m sorry. I know.”

If only he didn’t. Not knowing would have been a relief, an ideal excuse. But it was one of the few things that could never be torn away, because Eren would never forget. The love he had for Armin and the others, and the love they had for him. Eren closed his eyes, and again he kissed the fevered skin of Armin’s temple.

He did not expect forgiveness. Eren did not want it. Ahead he saw nothing but terrible, empty despair, and still Eren knew he would walk forward to meet it. Behind him the others would follow until he passed a threshold that none of them—not even Armin and Mikasa—could cross. But that was okay; it need only be him. And in the end, _after_ the end, there might be something shining among the ashes left in his wake. That had to be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> whether you read this on its own or as part of this brief series, thank you so much for taking the time to do so! i always appreciate it. writing porn that was sad but (hopefully) still hot and loving was an interesting challenge! 
> 
> the title again comes from robinson jeffer's ['hurt hawks'](http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/jeffers_hurthawks.html).


End file.
